Preventing Digital Casualties: An Interdisciplinary Research for Preserving Digital Art

There are practical problems associated with documentation, preservation, access, function, context and meaning of digital art. How do we care for similar works, and which are the theoretical and methodological challenges for curating and preserving digital art? Upon an ongoing case-based investigation of current digital and media art conservation practices at leading international museums, The author investigates how conservation for digital art could benefit from interdisciplinary synergies with Digital Preservation, Art Theory, and Information Management. A longer version of this paper entitled ‘Evolution and preservation of digital art: case studies from ZKM’, was presented at the Association of Art Historians (AAH) Conference 2010, University of Glasgow, United Kingdom.